and gentlemanly sort of a boy, I will say. I was quite taken
with him. In fact, because he told me there wasn’t much
opportunity for advancement where he was, and that he
would like to get into something where there was more
chance to do something and be somebody, I told him that if
he wanted to come on here and try his luck with us, we
might do a little something for him—give him a chance to
show what he could do, at least.”
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He had not intended to set forth at once the fact that he
became interested in his nephew to this extent, but—rather
to wait and thrash it out at different times with both his wife
and son, but the occasion having seemed to offer itself, he
had spoken. And now that he had, he felt rather glad of it,
for because Clyde so much resembled Gilbert he did want
to do a little something for him.
But Gilbert bristled and chilled, the while Bella and Myra, if
not Mrs. Griffiths, who favored her only son in everything—
even to preferring him to be without a blood relation or
other rival of any kind, rather warmed to the idea. A cousin
who was a Griffiths and good-looking and about Gilbert’s
age—and who, as their father reported, was rather pleasant
and well-mannered—that pleased Bella and Myra while
Mrs. Griffiths, noting Gilbert’s face darken, was not so
moved. He would not like him. But out of respect for her
husband’s authority and general ability in all things, she
now remained silent. But not so, Bella.
“Oh, you’re going to give him a place, are you, Dad?” she
commented. “That’s interesting. I hope he’s better-looking
than the rest of our cousins.”
“Bella,” chided Mrs. Griffiths, while Myra, recalling a gauche
uncle and cousin who had come on from Vermont several
years before to visit them a few days, smiled wisely. At the
same time Gilbert, deeply irritated, was mentally fighting
against the idea. He could not see it at all. “Of course we’re
not turning away applicants who want to come in and learn
the business right along now, as it is,” he said sharply.
“Oh, I know,” replied his father, “but not cousins and
nephews exactly. Besides he looks very intelligent and
ambitious to me. It wouldn’t do any great harm if we let at
least one of our relatives come here and show what he can
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do. I can’t see why we shouldn’t employ him as well as
another.”
“I don’t believe Gil likes the idea of any other fellow in
Lycurgus having the same name and looking like him,”
suggested Bella, slyly, and with a certain touch of malice
due to the fact that her brother was always criticizing her.
“Oh, what rot!” Gilbert snapped irritably. “Why don’t you
make a sensible remark once in a while? What do I care
whether he has the same name or not—or looks like me,
either?” His expression at the moment was particularly sour.
“Gilbert!” pleaded his mother, reprovingly. “How can you
talk so? And to your sister, too?”
“Well, I don’t want to do anything in connection with this
young man if it’s going to cause any hard feelings here,”
went on Griffiths senior. “All I know is that his father was
never very practical and I doubt if Clyde has ever had a real
chance.” (His son winced at this friendly and familiar use of
his cousin’s first name.) “My only idea in bringing him on
here was to give him a start. I haven’t the faintest idea
whether he would make good or not. He might and again
he might not. If he didn’t—” He threw up one hand as much
as to say, “If he doesn’t, we will have to toss him aside, of
course.”
“Well, I think that’s very kind of you, father,” observed Mrs.
Griffiths, pleasantly and diplomatically. “I hope he proves
satisfactory.”
“And there’s another thing,” added Griffiths wisely and
sententiously. “I don’t expect this young man, so long as he
is in my employ and just because he’s a nephew of mine, to
be treated differently to any other employee in the factory.
He’s coming here to work—not play. And while he is here,
trying, I don’t expect any of you to pay him any social
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attention—not the slightest. He’s not the sort of boy
anyhow, that would want to put himself on us—at least he
didn’t impress me that way, and he wouldn’t be coming
down here with any notion that he was to be placed on an
equal footing with any of us. That would be silly. Later on, if
he proves that he is really worth while, able to take care of
himself, knows his place and keeps it, and any of you
wanted to show him any little attention, well, then it will be
time enough to see, but not before then.”
By then, the maid, Amanda, assistant to Mrs. Truesdale,
was taking away the dinner plates and preparing to serve
the dessert. But as Mr. Griffiths rarely ate dessert, and
usually chose this period, unless company was present, to
look after certain stock and banking matters which he kept
in a small desk in the library, he now pushed back his chair,
arose, excusing himself to his family, and walked into the
library adjoining. The others remained.
“I would like to see what he’s like, wouldn’t you?” Myra
asked her mother.
“Yes. And I do hope he measures up to all of your father’s
expectations. He will not feel right if he doesn’t.”
“I can’t get this,” observed Gilbert, “bringing people on now
when we can hardly take care of those we have. And
besides, imagine what the bunch around here will say if
they find out that our cousin was only a bell-hop before
coming here!”
“Oh, well, they won’t have to know that, will they?” said
Myra.
“Oh, won’t they? Well, what’s to prevent him from speaking
about it—unless we tell him not to—or some one coming
along who has seen him there.” His eyes snapped viciously.
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“At any rate, I hope he doesn’t. It certainly wouldn’t do us
any good around here.”
And Bella added, “I hope he’s not dull as Uncle Allen’s two
boys. They’re the most uninteresting boys I ever did see.”
“Bella,” cautioned her mother once more.
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Chapter 3
THE Clyde whom Samuel Griffiths described as having met
at the Union League Club in Chicago, was a somewhat
modified version of the one who had fled from Kansas City
three years before. He was now twenty, a little taller and
more firmly but scarcely any more robustly built, and
considerably more experienced, of course. For since
leaving his home and work in Kansas City and coming in
contact with some rough usage in the world—humble tasks,
wretched rooms, no intimates to speak of, plus the
compulsion to make his own way as best he might—he had
developed a kind of self-reliance and smoothness of
address such as one would scarcely have credited him with
three years before. There was about him now, although he
was not nearly so smartly dressed as when he left Kansas
City, a kind of conscious gentility of manner which pleased,
even though it did not at first arrest attention. Also, and this
was considerably different from the Clyde who had crept
away from Kansas City in a box car, he had much more of
an air of caution and reserve.
For ever since he had fled from Kansas City, and by one
humble device and another forced to make his way, he had
been coming to the conclusion that on himself alone
depended his future. His family, as he now definitely
sensed, could do nothing for him. They were too impractical
and too poor—his mother, father, Esta, all of them.
At the same time, in spite of all their difficulties, he could
not now help but feel drawn to them, his mother in
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particular, and the old home life that had surrounded him as
a boy—his brother and sisters, Esta included, since she,
too, as he now saw it, had been brought no lower than he
by circumstances over which she probably had no more
control. And often, his thoughts and mood had gone back
with a definite and disconcerting pang because of the way
in which he had treated his mother as well as the way in
which his career in Kansas City had been suddenly
interrupted—his loss of Hortense Briggs—a severe blow;
the troubles that had come to him since; the trouble that
must have come to his mother and Esta because of him.
On reaching St. Louis two days later after his flight, and
after having been most painfully bundled out into the snow
a hundred miles from Kansas City in the gray of a winter